The Water Protectors at Standing Rock

Nearly two years before she opened her land to the first resistance camp, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, one of the women who forged the indigenous-led movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, introduced herself to some of the company representatives behind the $3.8 billion project, which would transport 570,000 barrels of oil a day across four states, through lands sacred to the tribe, and underneath the Missouri River, the source of drinking water for 17 million Americans. “Remember me,” Allard told them, “because I’m going to be standing here throughout this whole process.”

Allard’s daughter, Prairie McLaughlin, organized for months, while raising five children; she moved her life to camp, too. “I decided to give it my all,” she said. Joye Braun of the Indigenous Environmental Network and Jasilyn Charger, a cofounder of the International Indigenous Youth Council, arrived on the first day. Charger, with Bobbi Jean Three Legs and other youth runners, carried word of the pipeline all the way from North Dakota to the White House. Tara Houska moved her work for Honor the Earth to the camps; in October, executive director Winona LaDuke, a longtime fighter against big oil, and her sister Lorna Hanes were saddling their horses to lead a multiday spirit ride to raise awareness.

At its heart, the No DAPL resistance has been led and sustained by women. The water protectors of Standing Rock—those who endured violent arrests and strip searches, attacks by mace and tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons in sub-freezing temperatures; who led ceremonies in prayer and song and dance; who worked as camp leaders and medics, organizers, builders and cooks, lawyers and security patrol, supply runners and teachers; those who gave rides and gave speeches—all trace their lineage all the way back to Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth. “I want all the women all across this country to know that our people are a matriarchal society,” said Oglala Lakota elder Regina Brave, a veteran of the Wounded Knee occupation, the night before she was arrested for refusing an Army Corps of Engineers order to evict what she says is treaty land.

They came to Standing Rock to stop a pipeline. But they got the world to pay attention, and in doing so, they planted the seeds of a movement that has galvanized the country. “Our ancestors prepared me for this,” said Ta’sina Sapa Win, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the IIYC, who was wounded by security forces on the front lines in September. She stayed for months afterward, and she fights with even stronger conviction now. “I’m doing this for my son, for his water, for his future.”

A water protector preparing to join Honor the Earth’s spiritual ride at Oceti Sakowin Camp near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.

Aztec dancers after a prayer ceremony at Oceti Sakowin Camp.

Lorna Hanes, a leader of Honor the Earth’s spiritual ride, looks on at the ever-present helicopters hovering near Oceti Sakowin Camp.

Saddled up for Honor the Earth’s spiritual (and awareness-raising) horse ride from Standing Rock to Tioga, North Dakota. The multiday ride was led by Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth, in conjunction with the Wounded Knee Memorial riders, the Dakota 38 and Big Foot riders, and other Horse Nations.

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